Josh Edmondson accuses Team Sky of 'a cover-up' after he was reported for illegally injecting himself with vitamins

The crisis enveloping Team Sky deepened on Thursday night after a young British rider claimed he had injected himself with a cocktail of vitamins while he was on their books, contravening the sport’s 'no-needles' policy, and accused senior Team Sky management of “a cover-up” after a team-mate reported him.

In an interview with the BBC, Josh Edmondson, who rode for Sky in 2013 and 2014, also said he had severe depression after independently using the controversial painkiller Tramadol.

Team Sky confessed on Thursday night that they had been made aware of an “incident” at the time by their internal ‘whistle-blower’ policy in August 2014. They said a team-mate who lived with Edmondson found a “needle and some vials”.

However, Team Sky insist Edmondson assured them that he had not actually injected himself as he did not know how to use the needles. And they said they decided against reporting the incident to the authorities because “there was no evidence of any anti-doping violation having taken place” and because they were worried about his mental health.

Dr Steve Peters, Team Sky’s clinical director, felt Edmondson should instead be offered professional support. “I did think there was a really big risk this lad would be pushed over the edge,” Peters said. “I stand by my decision.

“I think I’d definitely have told them if I thought this young man was trying to cheat, but I don’t think he was doing that. It wasn’t just something we decided that we won’t bother saying anything. It was a lot of agonising.”

The failure to report the use of needles – even to inject legal vitamins – is a violation of the UCI’s ban on injections, which was introduced in 2011. It was unclear on Thursday night whether the UCI would investigate. Cycling’s world governing body did not return calls asking for comment.

The UCI’s disciplinary commission is authorised to impose a suspension from eight days to six months and/or a fine of 1,000 -100,000 Swiss francs for a first offence and the rules apply to “any licence-holder found to have committed the violation or to be an accomplice”.

Edmondson told the BBC that he travelled to Italy from his training base in Nice to purchase a variety of legal vitamins, and risked giving himself a heart attack by self-administering the medication secretly at night.

“I bought butterfly clips, the syringes, the carnitine [a supplement], folic acid, ‘TAD’ [a supplement], damiana compositum, and [vitamin] B12, and I’d just inject that two or three times a week maybe,” he said. “Especially when I wanted to lose weight, I’d inject the carnitine more often because it was very effective.”

UK Anti-Doping boss: We still don't know what was in mystery package

01:51

Edmondson says he confessed to the team after he was reported to them but alleged there was then a “cover-up”.

“They’d have had to say publicly a kid was injecting,” he told the BBC. “Injecting anything’s bad. It’s not like they were banned substances but injecting is against the rules – to self-administer anything, I believe.”

Peters denied there had been any cover-up. “Once you use that word you are saying there was an intent behind us to conceal and that was never the case,” he said.

Its legal use at Team Sky and British Cycling is one of the things being currently investigated by UK Anti-Doping, along with the medical package carried out to Sir Bradley Wiggins at the 2011 Critérium du Dauphiné. UKAD said it could not comment on an ongoing investigation.

Edmondson, who was retained by Team Sky until his contract expired in December 2014, said the drug had made him dangerously depressed. “It was a serious problem for me especially towards the end of 2014," he said. "I didn’t leave the house for two months.”

Team Sky said on Thursday night: “Both the Team Sky board and Josh’s agent were kept fully up to date throughout this process. We are satisfied that this incident was handled correctly."